The Wheel Of Life

[camerata]

Author John Blofeld was a lifelong Buddhist, scholar, sinophile and incurable romantic, who left the UK in 1930s to wander around China talking to Mongolian lamas, Zen masters, Taoist sages and other fascinating characters. He intended to spend his whole life in Peking but was forced out by WW2. He returned after the war as a diplomat, only to be forced out again by the communist takeover. He spoke Mandarin fluently, married a Chinese woman and eventually settled down in Thailand as a university lecturer. He was initiated into one of the Tibetan sects on a mountain in Sikkim, but his later career with the UN in Bangkok left him little time for more travel.

His autobiography is a kind of spiritual travel diary detailing his experiences mainly with Zen and Tantric Buddhism. It's also a fascinating look at a China that is long gone. Best of all, Blofeld gets to ask various dharma masters the kind of questions any westerner would ask.

I'd highly recommend this one to all fellow xenophiles out there. Blofeld wrote two other largely autobiographical books, one about Pure Land and his devotion to Kuan Yin, and another about his more secular activities (i.e. flower-girls, etc) in Peking. He also wrote books on Zen, Tantric Buddhism, Taoism and the I-Ching.

[Abandon]

you sure do read a lot of good books. I wish I was as diligent in reading as you....

Although I never get round to reading them, keep posting up about what you have read - always good to know what is about, and to keep an eye out for it.

[camerata]

you sure do read a lot of good books. I wish I was as diligent in reading as you....

Hurr... not really diligent, but I am a readoholic (non-fiction only) and reading works well for insomnia.

Although I never get round to reading them, keep posting up about what you have read - always good to know what is about, and to keep an eye out for it.

Customer reviews on amazon.com have been a godsend for me. It's pretty expensive shipping stuff to Thailand, but I've rarely ended up with a book or dvd I didn't like. So I try to do my part by reviewing anything I read too.

Blofeld's Bodhisattva of Compassion : The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin is worth reading. I bought this one mainly because after 5 years I'm two-thirds of the way through the Saigoku Kannon pilgrimage in Western Japan. Before I read it, I thought Pure Land Buddhism was very similar to Christianity in essence, but Blofeld convinced me that at a deeper level it isn't at all.

[sabaijai]

Blofeld's Wheel of Life was one of the books that led me to move to Thailand in 1977. At that time he was teaching at Chulalongkorn U, and leading occasional tours of Bangkok. We had mutual friends, and I started corresponding with him by mail in 1979, about the same time Chula forced him to retire, at age 65, with no pension. We met once in Bangkok in 1981 and he mentioned this with some bitterness. His last few years were not easy, financially speaking, and he passed away in '87.

He was a seeker from an earlier age, when places like China or Thailand were still 'remote'.